With Covid-19 heating up again — the number of cases is on the rise in every single state — President Biden is following former President Donald Trump in failing to launch a large testing program. and in relying up vaccines to crush the disease.
And that puts the health of the hospitality industry, including bev/al suppliers, distributors and retailers, at risk.
Case in point: Montgomery County, Md., is doing “contingency planning” to reinstate restrictions if Covid-19 cases continue to increase. But its “planning” doesn’t include systematic testing, even of unvaccinated persons, to curb the spread.
To be sure, Sen. Chris VanHollen (D-Md.) blasted politicians and media spreading lies about the efficacy of the Covid vaccines. And, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention Thursday (7/22) announced the Department of Health & Human Services will spend more than $1.6 billion to support testing and mitigation measures in “high-risk congregate settings to prevent the spread of Covid-19 and to detect and stem potential outbreaks.”
But testing in homeless shelters, treatment and recovery facilities, domestic violence shelters and federal, state and local correctional facilities is not enough. The problem is, it’s not just people in those facilities that are spreading the disease. To test them, but not to test the general population, is simply ineffective. It may be easy, but it’s wrong.
As of 6 a.m. July 21, only 161.9 million Americans — about 48.8% of the population — have been fully vaccinated That’s far fewer than the 80% of the population that non-government public health experts say is needed to achieve anything approaching herd immunity.
Another reason it’s not enough: This disease is really tricky. The disease can be spread by someone who shows no signs of illness.
To be sure, as the CDC says, “Covid-19 vaccines are an essential tool to help protect people against Covid-19 illness, including new variants.” There’s no question about that. The vaccines do help most people who receive them avoid Covid.
But the vaccines aren’t enough, especially with the large number of people who won’t get vaccinated.
Within President Biden’s lifetime, U.S. presidents set a goal of going to the moon, and of seeing the Berlin Wall fall. President Biden needs to set a national goal of eliminating Covid. It can be done: The world, led by the U.S., has eliminated smallpox and is on the verge of eliminating polio.
How do you do that? You have to identify the people who are spreading the disease — regardless of whether they are symptomatic– and isolate them, do contact tracing and if necessary, isolate those who were in contact with them.
This works. But it requires a massive testing program.
There are two challenges with a mass testing program. First is simply getting people to be sampled. It’s logical that someone who doesn’t want to be vaccinated will not want to go out of their way to get tested.
The solution to this is relatively simple: Rather than expect people go to the test, bring the test to where people want to (or need to) go: Grocery stores, entertainment venues, work places, places of worship, etc. If people want to have “a life” they will have to be tested.
The second is we can’t strip hospitals of medical personnel to administer the test. Literally, the test must be able to be administered by anyone. Fortunately, that can be done with a simple saliva test developed at the University of Illinois. Indiana University used its events staff — ushers and similar folks — to administer the tests. Results are available within 2-6 hours rather than three to four days or more.
The quick turnaround time for the saliva test results is a key in curbing the virus, allowing isolation early enough to limit spread of the infection as well as narrowing down past exposure to allow more-effective contact tracing. It also identifies and isolates people with asymptomatic cases who would otherwise spread the virus unknowingly.
Indiana University used the Illinois Shield saliva-based testing system, and beginning Aug. 24, 2020, until now had a maximum positivity rate of 0.7%. By comparison, the Covid positivity rate for the State of Indiana as a whole is 8.4%.
Former President Trump denigrated the virus, saying it was a “Democratic hoax.” President Biden blames Facebook. He needs to stop and make elimination of Covid his No. 1 economic priority. Then, and only then, will the hospitality industry be safe. Testing, not just within congregate living facilities, is the key.